In a town where beer is champagne and bratwurst is caviar, the plump, German luncheon link has become embroiled in a bizarre racial dispute that is sizzling hotter this summer than a backyard barbecue. The City Council Friday voted to censure Michael McGee, a flamboyant black alderman who has previously threatened urban guerrilla violence against whites, for his part in a product tampering scare last weekend.

The last time folks here got this riled about the public schools was 10 years ago. Charles Miller remembers it well. "I lost friends," said the longtime school board president. What happened was that the school board changed the boundaries of the town's two high schools. For the first time, the sons and daughters of the affluent south side sat in classrooms with blue-collar kids from across the tracks. "There was tremendous controversy," Miller recalls.

Trial began in a federal court suit filed by the Milwaukee School Board and the NAACP charging that racial segregation in the city's schools is a result of action by the state and the city's suburbs. Segregation is a "cancerous growth that must be excised from the Milwaukee area," NAACP attorney Grover Hankins told U.S. District Judge Thomas J. Curran. Defendants in the civil suit are 24 suburbs of Milwaukee, Wisconsin Gov. Tommy G. Thompson and Herbert V.

Milwaukee Mayor John O. Norquist said that racial insensitivity partly explains why police officers returned a naked Laotian boy to Jeffrey L. Dahmer's apartment even though neighbors told the officers that the boy needed help. The 14-year-old's body was later found in the apartment among 11 dismembered corpses. "There's no way you can't conclude racial sensitivity is an issue," Norquist said. "There is no question in my mind the relationship has to be improved."

FBI agents and federal marshals will be sent to northern Wisconsin to help local authorities enforce Chippewa Indians' off-reservation hunting and fishing rights, a sheriff in Madison said. A federal judge issued a final ruling last month in a 16-year-old court battle over the Indians' right to carry out traditional spearfishing by flashlight soon after the ice breaks up on northern Wisconsin lakes.

The last time folks here got this riled about the public schools was 10 years ago. Charles Miller remembers it well. "I lost friends," said the longtime school board president. What happened was that the school board changed the boundaries of the town's two high schools. For the first time, the sons and daughters of the affluent south side sat in classrooms with blue-collar kids from across the tracks. "There was tremendous controversy," Miller recalls.

Milwaukee Mayor John O. Norquist said that racial insensitivity partly explains why police officers returned a naked Laotian boy to Jeffrey L. Dahmer's apartment even though neighbors told the officers that the boy needed help. The 14-year-old's body was later found in the apartment among 11 dismembered corpses. "There's no way you can't conclude racial sensitivity is an issue," Norquist said. "There is no question in my mind the relationship has to be improved."

Growing frustration with public schools has helped forge an unlikely alliance between blacks and conservative whites that may make Wisconsin the first state in the nation to use public funds to pay directly for private school educations. The school plan--sort of a modified voucher system passed by the Legislature in March--is scheduled to go into effect with the start of school in the fall.

A judge on Thursday granted a black woman's wish that her two young girls live with an affluent, suburban white couple, ending social workers' plans to place the children with black foster parents in the inner city. Milwaukee County Children's Court Judge Ronald S. Goldberger ordered that the woman's 5-month-old daughter remain in the care of foster parents Beverly and David Cox of Delafield, a suburb about 30 miles west of Milwaukee.

FBI agents and federal marshals will be sent to northern Wisconsin to help local authorities enforce Chippewa Indians' off-reservation hunting and fishing rights, a sheriff in Madison said. A federal judge issued a final ruling last month in a 16-year-old court battle over the Indians' right to carry out traditional spearfishing by flashlight soon after the ice breaks up on northern Wisconsin lakes.

A judge on Thursday granted a black woman's wish that her two young girls live with an affluent, suburban white couple, ending social workers' plans to place the children with black foster parents in the inner city. Milwaukee County Children's Court Judge Ronald S. Goldberger ordered that the woman's 5-month-old daughter remain in the care of foster parents Beverly and David Cox of Delafield, a suburb about 30 miles west of Milwaukee.

Growing frustration with public schools has helped forge an unlikely alliance between blacks and conservative whites that may make Wisconsin the first state in the nation to use public funds to pay directly for private school educations. The school plan--sort of a modified voucher system passed by the Legislature in March--is scheduled to go into effect with the start of school in the fall.

In a town where beer is champagne and bratwurst is caviar, the plump, German luncheon link has become embroiled in a bizarre racial dispute that is sizzling hotter this summer than a backyard barbecue. The City Council Friday voted to censure Michael McGee, a flamboyant black alderman who has previously threatened urban guerrilla violence against whites, for his part in a product tampering scare last weekend.

Trial began in a federal court suit filed by the Milwaukee School Board and the NAACP charging that racial segregation in the city's schools is a result of action by the state and the city's suburbs. Segregation is a "cancerous growth that must be excised from the Milwaukee area," NAACP attorney Grover Hankins told U.S. District Judge Thomas J. Curran. Defendants in the civil suit are 24 suburbs of Milwaukee, Wisconsin Gov. Tommy G. Thompson and Herbert V.